Here Come da Judge

Okay, so the title of this entry dates me… that’s okay. With age comes wisdom and experience, at least that’s the goal for most of us. And in my case I was able to celebrate a professional milestone this year.

I applied and was accepted to judge the Brandon Hall Awards in online learning (now that the judging process is over, they’ve notified us that we can reveal ourselves). It was an amazing and enlightening experience, and I’m grateful and honored to have been a part of it.

Reviewing the entries was intriguing and informative. I’m bound by confidentiality not to reveal specifics but I will say that I’m impressed and encouraged by the innovative ways that Web development teams are using the tools at hand to create ever more interesting ways to provide training online.

Basic roll-overs and what we called “click-thrus” to add more interactivity than clicking Next Page have evolved.

High-quality graphics, 3-D imaging, and other influences from virtual worlds and gaming have made visual instruction online much more effective, realistic, and affordable.

More experienced online learners means increased focus on the learning event itself with less need to educate the learner about how to navigate, hear the audio, etc. This makes online courses leaner, less cluttered.

The more the corporate world invests in custom content creation, the more accessible it will be to the association world — more usable in our technological environment, more affordable, and faster to create.

Competitions such as this one encourage custom content companies to push themselves to innovate, and that benefits us all.